Testing China’s Government Transparency Sweet Talk

Yiyi Lu, an expert on Chinese civil society, is currently working on a project to promote open government information in China. She is the author of “Non-Governmental Organisations in China: The Rise of Dependent Autonomy” (Routledge 2008).

Yiyi Lu

China’s central government has been sounding all the right notes on transparency, issuing a series of documents in recent months extolling the virtues of open government and even going so far as to issue guidelines on when Chinese citizens can sue government bodies to get the information they seek. The reality of government information disclosure China is not so pretty, however.

One figure whose story illustrates the chasm separating the rhetoric on Chinese government transparency from reality is Li Yan, a master’s student at Tsinghua University Law School whose efforts to write a paper on the division of responsibility between vice ministers in central government agencies have been stymied by the refusal of the agencies to release information about the duties of their respective vice ministers.

According to state media reports, Li submitted requests for information to 14 ministries in May. While some supplied the information, most have yet to reply to her request. The Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Land and Resources rejected her request. She is suing them.

China’s Regulation on Open Government Information gives Chinese citizens the right to ask the government to release information “based on the special needs of such matters as their own production, livelihood, and scientific and technological research.” In the three years since the Regulation came into force, citizens’ requests for government information have often been denied on the grounds that the information sought does not serve those special needs.

Research by the Law Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences finds that government bodies have also devised various other methods for deterring information requests. For example, one local government has stipulated that citizens must download an application form from its website, fill in the form by hand, then scan or photograph the completed form and email it back to the government. It refuses to accept application forms sent by post, making it difficult for people without access to the internet and a scanner or digital camera to submit requests for government information.

In rejecting Li Yan’s request for information about what its vice ministers’ jobs are, the Ministry of Education maintained that the requested information was internal information that was irrelevant to her special needs. It told Li to figure out the duties of each vice minister herself by studying their public engagements and speeches.

The Ministry of Land and Resources told Li to look for the information on its website. Li says she checked the website and the information was nowhere to be found.

Li’s biggest challenge, however, came from the Ministry of Science and Technology, or MST. Its online information request system only accepted landline telephone numbers, so Li left the number of her university dorm. After three days, MST rejected her request saying the number was not valid. Li resubmitted her request, this time leaving the telephone number of the Law School entrance guard as well as her mobile phone number, which she entered in the space for comments. MST again rejected the request, claiming they couldn’t get through to her.

After Li submitted her request for a third time, MST asked her for the phone number of the Law School’s administrative office, saying they were going to verify her identity. In the end, MST refused to give Li the information, stating that under the leadership of the minister, the duties of vice ministers are constantly adjusted as the work develops and their positions change.

Some ministries acceded to Li’s request, but not without a fight. The Ministry of Civil Affairs released the information Li sought only after asking her to provide the title of her paper and explain in which paragraph of the paper the information would be used.

One of the most absurd efforts to avoid complying with Li’s request came from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, which asked Li to provide the number of the government document that contained the information she sought. Li would have no idea if such a document even existed, let alone being able to give its number.

To be sure, Chinese government agencies are not alone in devising creative ways to avoid disclosing information to the public. Researchers and journalists in the U.S. routinely tell horror stories about trying to obtain information from federal agencies through the Freedom of Information Act. Few of those stories, however, involve information as basic as what Li Yan is seeking. (The U.S. Department of State, for example, lists the duties of its senior officials under the “about” section of its website.)

Li’s battle to obtain the information she needs comes despite support for greater transparency at top of the government. In August, the General Offices of the State Council and the Party Central Committee jointly issued a circular, “Opinions on Promoting Transparency in Government Affairs and Improving Government Services,” that called for more government openness. Also in August, the Supreme People’s Court issued a judicial interpretation that clarified citizens’ right to sue the government if their requests for information are rejected.

Following the issuance of the circular, the party mouthpiece People’s Daily published a series of four commentaries to emphasize the significance of the push for open government, describing it as offering a perspective on the party central leadership’s “top-level design” of the political reform path. The leadership, one commentary said, is “making government openness a key link in the reform of the political system, using reform to promote openness, and using openness to advance reform.”

In another commentary, the newspaper recognizes that openness presents a major challenge for government bodies, but quotes central leaders in arguing that “without reform the party will itself face hazards.” And in the last of the commentaries, the paper observes that for both the government and citizens, “open government information is a kind of basic drill for democracy,” and encourages both the government and citizens to actively participate in the endeavor.

While all that sounds nice, Li Yan’s experience in seeking basic information about how the central government functions suggests that the leadership in Beijing still has a long way to go before it achieves the sort of transparency it claims to desire. What happens with Li’s lawsuit will offer a measure of how serious China’s leaders are about reform and how seriously they take the potential hazard of maintaining the culture of secrecy.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.